Background

The name of the Sixteenth Legion now resounds as a curse of utter desperation across the shattered realms of the Imperium. The sheer depth of their treachery makes it easy to forget the heights from which they fell; once they were the favoured Legion of the Emperor, the Champions of Humanity, first among the Legiones Astartes. Now they fight not for their creator, but for the Warmaster Horus Lupercal,in his quest to hurl his father from his throne on Terra and set the galaxy ablaze.

Christened as the Luna Wolves after the subjugation of Luna, the Sixteenth Legion fought alongside the Emperor throughout the Great Crusade. Under the command of the Primarch Horus, no other Legion achieved as much glory or won as many victories. The Luna Wolves sought to be flexible enough to fight any foe in any situation, but but favoured brutal actions in which they ripped the throat out of their foes wherever possible, leaving the enemy shocked and unable to respond. Their informal organisation let to the creation of 'speartips', a pragmatic approach to war where the most suitable were assigned to a force removed from their own company in order to prosecute a campaign. Their methods suited the needs of the Great Crusade, and their fearsome reputation went ahead of them from world to world. The Luna Wolves were characterised by their immense pride, the utmost confidence in their own abilities and the tactical nuance of their Primarch.

As recruits were taken in from the hellish world of Cthonia, so the Legion began to move way from the ordered Terran military traditions. Cthonia was home to warring gangs in a brutal culture where it was killed or be killed, and her children had the spirit to make brutally effective Astartes. Over time, the Luna Wolves became more and more heavily influenced by their new home world, as topknots, gang markings and Cthonic language spread throughout the Legion.

At Ullanor, Horus broke the back of the greatest Ork Empire in history and was honoured as a result with the title of Warmaser, and the command of the armies of the Imperium. In the years afterwards, the Luna Wolves shed their name and became the Sons of Horus, armoured in a murky metallic grey-green. Horus and his Legion were now truly the first among equals, having risen to heights unrivalled by any of the other Legions of the Imperium.

Why Horus turned traitor will never be fully understood by those who were not close to him. What we do know is that at some point, Horus, consumed by bitterness and ambition, began plans to conquer the Imperium he had forged for his father. On Isstvan III, the Horus Heresy began with the viral bombing and massacre of the loyalist portions of the Sons of Horus, World Eaters, Death Guard and Emperor's Children. On Isstvan V, the Warmaster shattered three Legions of the Emperor, and any hopes of peace were extinguished. Horus had slain the dream of humanity, and the greatest war in history had begun.

In the wake of Horus' treachery on Istvaan III and the galaxy plunged into civil war, confusion and panic spreads along the whole Beneheventian Sub-Sector. With the ragtag survivors of the drop site ..→